


Blue Eyes and Bad Dreams

by WonkyWarmaiden



Series: The Bad Old Days [3]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-11
Updated: 2017-03-11
Packaged: 2018-10-02 12:33:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10218152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WonkyWarmaiden/pseuds/WonkyWarmaiden
Summary: Reaper is haunted by his past mistakes.





	

Jack is beautiful. A tousled halo of blond hair and laughing blue eyes. Pale, scarred skin flushed pink and dotted with sweat, tangled in sun warmed sheets. Fingers clenching and relaxing in the covers as Gabe looms over him, thrusting his hips slowly, drawing moans from between open lips.

“You’re killing me, Gabe,” Jack groans. He reaches out but Gabe catches his wrist and pins it against the bed with a chuckle.

“I haven’t even gotten started yet,” Gabe assures him, picking up the pace of his thrusts.

A dark splotch appears at the edge of his vision, like a wisp of smoke, and he shakes his head to get rid of it but it only gets worse. It creeps further into view, until the sun and warmth is completely gone and he can feel his knees press against sharp rubble as he leans over Jack and chokes the life out of him. Blue eyes that had looked at him with love now water with betrayal, like Gabe is seeing Jack’s heart break right there in front of him. 

Jack reaches up but Gabe backhands him, snapping his head to the side. He doesn’t want to see those eyes anymore, looking at Gabe like he’s the backstabber, like Gabe hasn’t been cleaning up Jack’s messes for years, like Jack has any right to think he’s better than Gabe.

Gabe hears the ceiling collapse above him just before it hits him full force, rebar skewering through him and into Jack, pinning them together in death.

**********

Reaper jerks awake, blinking away the nightmare and memories of blue eyes. He stands with a growl of discomfort, back stiff from falling asleep sitting against the wall, making Sombra look up from the data files she’s studying.

“Bad dreams?” she asks in a tone that says she knows exactly what he was dreaming about.

Reaper grunts and heads for the door of the Talon safehouse they’ve been cooped up in for the past week.

“Whoa, where are you going? We’ve got a mission to finish,” Sombra says with a gesture at the files she finally cracked into.

“Out,” Reaper explains. “You and Widowmaker can handle it.” Sombra’s response is cut off when he slams the door shut and ghosts down the three flights of stairs to the bottom floor. Anything to be out of that stuffy apartment.

Honestly, the humid midday air he steps out into isn’t much better. Reaper doesn’t know exactly what Talon is hoping to find in this backwoods little town in the middle of Florida but he isn’t sticking around to find out. He heads towards the outcropping of trees on the outskirts of town where they’d set down the Talon issued MV-261 Orca, taking the back roads so he doesn’t frighten the locals. He boards the plane and is starting the takeoff sequence when he spots a glimmer of something in his peripheral, sitting in the co-pilot seat.

“Sombra,” he snarls and the hacker drops her cloak with a laugh. “Get out. Now,” he orders.

“No can do, Gabe, not until you tell me where you’re going,” Sombra says, propping her feet up on the control panel and checking her nails.

Reaper sighs in irritation, black smoke curling from his lips. “To take care of some unfinished business,” he says.

Sombra rolls her eyes. “Well, that’s vague. You’re going to have to do better than that.”

Reaper hates having to explain himself but if it gets him in the air faster he’ll do it. “Fine. I’m going back to Gibraltar.”

“You know, I could just hack in and get those files you want,” Sombra offers. “You just have to ask nicely.”

“No,” Reaper says. “I’m doing this alone.”

“Whatever.” Sombra shrugs. “See you later,” she says and teleports away to one of her hidden translocators.

Reaper sighs again, this time in exhaustion, and lifts the plane off the ground. He sets the coordinates for Watchpoint: Gibraltar into the autopilot and leans back in his seat to get a few more hours of sleep.

**********

He’s back under the rubble, stuck in the dark, pinned above Jack by the rebar. Breathing is agony, moving is even worse. Jack is quiet, has been for a while now. Gabe can’t tell if he’s still alive. 

Gabe doesn’t know how long they’ve been trapped, he keeps passing out from blood loss and losing count of the minutes. His body has gone numb and he knows he doesn’t have much longer to live.

“Jack,” he calls but the man beneath him doesn’t even twitch.

His rage had burned away long ago and left him to realize what he’d done.

Gabe’s eyes start to water. “I’m sorry, Jack,” he says. “I fucked up. I let Talon get to me. They said you were dirty, that you were working with them. I should have known that agent I interrogated was lying but I--I let him play on my jealousy. And it’s killed us both.” He’s outright sobbing now and it hurts so much. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Gabe feels his heart beat for one last time and then his world disappears.

**********

Gabe gasps awake, the bright light above blinds him after being in the dark for so long and he has to close his eyes against it. The bed beneath him is oddly cold and he sits up, trying to ignore the aching pain that travels through his entire body when he does so. He squints around the room and freezes. He’s in the morgue. He tries to stand and his legs give out beneath him. No, they don’t give out, they turn to black smoke.

Gabe shouts as he tumbles to the floor and stares in horror at the swirling black mass where his legs used to be.

Angela comes banging through the morgue doors, her heels clicking hurriedly across the linoleum floor towards him. She stands over him and gapes. “Gabriel! It worked!” she exclaims excitedly.

Gabe sucks in panicked breaths. “What worked? What did you do to me!?” he asks fearfully.

“You were gone, Gabriel. Dead. I used a prototype I’ve been working on to resurrect you,” Angela explains, kneeling down beside him.

Gabe glowers at her. “How could you?” he asks. “I made my peace, it was my time. Why didn’t you let me die, instead of turning me into some kind of freak show?”

Angela gives him a pitying look and he hates it. “Gabriel--”

Gabe pictures Jack’s body sitting alone in that rubble and grits his teeth in anger. “How could you!” he yells at her. He tries to slap her but his arm turns to smoke before he can make contact.

Angela reaches out to him. “You need to calm down--”

“Fuck you!” Gabe snarls. “You played God and I came back wrong!” As he yells his body dissolves faster and faster into smoke. Eventually his entire body is just a churning black cloud.

He just wants to get away. From Angela, from Overwatch. All of it. With that thought he’s able to command his new form to move, swirling under the morgue doors and past a few startled people out in the hall. He ignores Angela pleading to him to come back and billows out into the cold Zurich night.

**********

Reaper gasps awake, for real this time, and glances down at the blinking message on the console that tells him that he has arrived at the Watchpoint. He cracks his neck and stands as the autopilot lands the ship a ways away from the base. He hits the door release and shadow steps the short distance to the Watchpoint.

It’s the middle of the night in Gibraltar so Reaper is able to walk right into the base without running into anyone, avoiding the security sensors he knows Winston has in place and making his way back to the barely lit server room. When Reaper gets there he pulls out a hacking device, nearly identical to the one he’d used on his previous attempt except for a few improvements he’d had Sombra make, and jams it into the server.

No alarms go off this time, no annoying monkey jumps out of the darkness to electrocute him, he just stands there and watches the little bar on the device tick up to full before it gives a single chime to signal that all files had been downloaded successfully. Reaper pulls the device out of the server, tucks it away in a pouch on his belt and heads back the way he came. Pleased that no one has gotten in his way.

Then he steps back out into the hall and comes face-to-face with McCree.

“Aw hell!” McCree shouts in surprise and his hand shoots to his hip, grasping for the revolver that isn’t there because he’s only in a pair of pajama bottoms with cartoon cacti printed on them.

Reaper laughs menacingly, pulling his shotguns from the depths of his coat. “Ingrate,” he growls and McCree’s eyes narrow in distant recognition.

“Just who in the hell are you?” McCree asks and tongues at his lip where his cigarillo usually sits, irritated at being caught unarmed.

Reaper cocks his shotguns. “Your worst nightmare,” he says and fires.

A red, white and blue blur tackles McCree out of the way just in time to keep the cowboy’s face from being blasted into hamburger.

“Great, another one,” Reaper sighs.

“McCree, go get the others!” the stranger barks. He’s at least smart enough to not turn away from Reaper when he says it, keeping his visor and rifle trained on the avenging spirit standing in front of him.

“You ain’t gotta tell me twice, 76,” McCree says and takes off running.

Reaper takes aim at the cowboy’s vulnerable retreating back but a fist connects with his mask and sends his next shot into the ceiling.

“Eyes on me, pendejo,” the stranger, 76, growls at him.

Something buried deep in Reaper’s chest flutters at that, something that has been dormant for the last five years. Memories of sparring sessions between him and Jack where the blond would tease him whenever he’d get distracted. Reaper ignores the fluttering and takes aim at 76’s head, determined to finish this and get out before every single Overwatch agent shows up for a pajama party.

76 predicts what Reaper is about to do and uses the butt of his rifle to knock Reaper’s shotguns from his hands and force him against the wall. Reaper snarls angrily and ghosts out of 76’s hold, swirling through the other man’s legs and reforming at his back. He grabs 76 by the head, intent on breaking the annoying man’s neck and being done with it, but 76 elbows Reaper in the face and squirms out of his grip. But not without losing his visor in the process.

76’s hand shoots up to cover his face and Reaper laughs. “Not so brave now, are you? What’s wrong? Don’t want to mess up your pretty face?” he asks. Then 76’s turns and Reaper stops laughing.

Jack glares at him. “I think you messed it up plenty,” he says and Reaper can see the two scars that cut across his face diagonally. Remembers the beaker he shot that caused those.

“Jack?” Reaper asks, at a loss for anything more intelligent to say.

Of course that’s when Ana appears behind Jack and shoots Reaper with a sleep dart.

THE END


End file.
